Distribution plays · № 1 of 7 · borrows the attention inside AI assistants

Turn an MCP server into a sales channel

fast · weeks to first installsborrow

Model Context Protocol servers plug your product directly into Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. Your app no longer only lives on your website — it can also live in the places people go to connect tools to their AI assistants.

59k★
Context7’s GitHub stars — reached with zero traditional marketing (240k+ weekly downloads). A free MCP tool that became Upstash’s funnel.

What the evidence says

There’s a named 5-factor pattern behind successful servers: a daily pain point, a simple interface over sophisticated internals, zero-setup install, works in every MCP client, privacy by design. Focus wins — Context7 exposes exactly two tools. Hands-on Architectscase study

The catch

Know what your tool is bad at: Context7 scores 9.4/10 on single-library queries but 3.5/10 cross-library. And the protocol is young — “the worst documented technology I have ever encountered,” per one practitioner; OAuth and transport choices have real footguns. How to MCPguide

The cheap test

Build around one question users already ask their AI — a single tool, deployed remotely (hosted URL, not local install), listed on the registries. “Every additional setup step is a point where potential users drop off.”

First steps, from the essay

  1. Identify one problem users would rather ask an AI than click through your interface
  2. Build the MCP server around that single job — one useful function beats recreating the product
  3. Deploy remotely (hosted at a URL, not a local install)
  4. Publish to the MCP registry, Smithery, mcp.so, and PulseMCP

The cast

Context7 — Upstash’s docs-for-AI MCP server; the play’s canonical proof point.
  • 59k+ GitHub stars, 240k+ weekly downloads — zero traditional marketing
  • Exposes exactly two tools; focus as a design principle
Firecrawl — web scraping for AI.
  • Free scraping inside Claude/Cursor funnels users to the paid API
  • Also recurs in play 4 as the dataset-building tool
MCP registries — the official registry, Smithery, mcp.so, PulseMCP.
  • Publishing to all four is the play’s whole “go to market”

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